Just putting it out there on the record, but I've gone ahead and bought the Dear Jane add-on for Electric Quilt 8. My excuse is that they were having a sale, and I've always always wanted to make one of these quilts. Not that I need an excuse, but there it is anyway, more of an explanation. The original book came out in 1996, back when I was first imprinting on quilts and quilt styles as a newbie quilter.
I think I'm really drawn to the sampler sort of quilt in general, they are fun to do and fun to look at. They're more bite-sized and attainable than some of the other big quilts out there. For instance, I really really love big Storm at Sea quilts, but I know I won't ever be able to make that many of one block. Not exactly boring, just not for me, I need more variety or the challenge of making so many different blocks I guess. Thankfully there's a lot of quilts out there to be made for everyone, right?
The main thing to me about this quilt is those awesome pieced border triangles, the look of those has always gotten to me, they're just so different than the normal thing used. I honestly am not sure about the final scallop border, but obviously that's a long way off to be deciding the final steps at this point. When I haven't made a single block yet. Maybe I should just make the border triangles all by themselves?
There are so many different versions out there in all sorts of fabric styles and so on. I know for sure is that I'm not going to use reproduction era fabrics. Not my ideal color palette to spend that much time with. I was looking at all the other finished ones that are out there, and found a Tula Pink version which is Very Rainbow-y.
My first idea is to do a version all in my hand-dyed and surface-designed fabrics. I think I will make up a couple blocks this way and see how it looks to me. Make visual decisions visually, right?
Perhaps I will do an all Tula Pink and my hand-dyes version. I thought that was a pretty great combination for the City Sampler 100 blocks quilt. But I used up a lot of hand-dyes to make it, so I'll have to dye some more...and that's one of the things I want to do next year. Adding on another reason to actually dye something to my very long list. I think one of the coolest things about the Dear Jane quilt is the use of prints, so I probably will use prints (or very textured dyed fabrics) in the same places.
3 comments:
I have had the software for a long time. I have thought about it for a long time, but I have never committed. I'll support you, but still can't commit. I need to finish La Pass first. I'll look forward to your process.
Your City Sampler does look great. Super bright and cheerful.
You definitely need to get La Pass done, you're doing so well on it. I don't know if I'll start in on the Dear Jane this year, but maybe I'll try coloring one in on EQ8 to get an idea of which fabrics to use.
Post a Comment